Recently a playground swarming with striped menacing looking insects caused panic among children and teachers. Eventually, a team of entomologists were called in to identify the flying creatures. It turned out that the children and teachers had all made fools of themselves since the scary looking flying bugs were really just harmless hoverflies. Then again, it may be unfair to call everyone in the playground that day foolish since these hoverflies did not look like ordinary hoverflies.

It turns out that birds only consider eating large hoverflies since smaller hoverflies would not be worth the effort for such a small meal. Therefore large hoverflies, which birds love to eat, need some sort of protection from their flying predator enemies, and that is where the bee and yellow jacket mimicry comes in. Birds obviously do not like the feeling of being stung by predators such as bees, yellow jackets and other wasps, so, naturally they avoid eating those types of predatory flying insects and instead go for hoverflies, unless of course they look like bees or wasps. If you sit in front of garden for a period of time you will likely catch one of these hoverflies fooling birds with their intimidating colors.